The Donald Trump administration has announced the launch of a large-scale program to declassify materials related to UFOs, unidentified anomalous phenomena, and possible extraterrestrial life.
Under the new directive, the U.S. Department of War, together with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, will begin searching for, reviewing, declassifying, and publishing documents that remained classified for decades.
Archival image from the Apollo 17 mission to the Moon. The yellow frame highlights an enlarged fragment of the original photograph, showing three glowing objects above the lunar surface.
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command reported an unidentified object near Japan resembling the shape of an American football.
The U.S. Army reported the observation of an unidentified object in North America. 2026.
Officials say the archive includes tens of millions of records, some of which exist only in paper form. The release process will take place in stages, with new documents expected to be published every few weeks.
The first batch includes so-called “unresolved cases”—incidents in which U.S. authorities were unable to reach a definitive conclusion about the nature of the observed objects or phenomena. Officials said that in some cases the lack of a conclusion was due to insufficient data.
Pete Hegseth said the White House intends to deliver “unprecedented transparency” on the issue of UFOs and UAPs.
Donald Trump previously said he ordered the release of the materials after “enormous interest” from the American public.